


your mouth should be working for me for free

by peakgay



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cheating, Cunnilingus, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Oral Sex, Piano Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 02:10:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6451303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peakgay/pseuds/peakgay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliza opens the door. Like the cat being let in every morning, Maria slips out the barest slit of the door into the hallway, murmuring a <i>Thank you</i> over her shoulder, a hurried <i>good-night</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your mouth should be working for me for free

**Author's Note:**

> This was stirred along by [The Maid Needs a Maid](http://burreliza.tumblr.com/post/141982592060/mrseavey-emily-haines-the-maid-needs-a-maid) by Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - coincidentally, that's also the song this title's from.
> 
> Content warnings note: Abuse and cheating, the effects of that. I don't think anything's much harsher than the musical but it's rough.

Maria Reynolds starts coming in on Tuesday nights, in Eliza’s 5:30 slot. She knows nothing about playing piano, though her singing voice is spectacular. She’s young. Pretty.

Alexander comes in and asks them if they’d like coffee.

Maria says yes. Eliza declines but Alexander brings her tea anyway. They all stand and chat for a minute. Maria is bright eyed and rests her tongue between her teeth when she looks at Alexander.

Eliza ignores it.

-

“What’s that cologne,” Eliza asks, smoothing her palms over Alexander’s suit. “You’ve been gone all day,” she adds, kissing his cheek. The stubble’s getting a little unbearable.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, Burr and I were in the office…” He trails off and kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t overwork yourself,” she says, and strokes the side of his face. “Philip’s lesson is tonight. Do you want to have dinner afterwards? Do you know if there’s anything…” He dips his head and sighs. “No, no,” she says, cupping Alexander’s face again and shaking her head. “Never mind. I’ll make...something.”

“Thank you,” he says, and brushes her hair back and Eliza smiles at him. 

“You’re tired,” she says. “Get some rest.”

Then he kisses her mouth, and Eliza leans into it. Sweet, and vaguely familiar.

Philip laughs as she guides his hands on the piano.

“Call your father downstairs. I’m going to start dinner.”

Philip bounds up the stairs. Eliza sits at the piano and plays her scales. Philip is so small and bright. Too thin at the waist. She should make him something - something with carbs. What does he eat? He’s too young.

She leaves to stand in the kitchen.

-

Maria Reynolds comes back week after week. She’s still a beginner, learning her scales, learning how major and minor chords work. She plays repetitive notes and listens intently as Eliza explains. She’s easily Eliza’s best student; which might be because she’s one of the only adults still at this point.

“What made you want to take up piano?” Eliza says at the end of a lesson. 

Maria looks up from the keys, startled. She licks her lips and then shrugs, standing. She gathers the beginner’s book and slips it into her shoulder bag, flattening a hand over her skirt. She doesn’t make eye contact often, but she glances at Eliza then, and, teeth in her bottom lip says, “My husband thinks I’m boring.”

Then she goes very still, and very quiet, and Eliza nods.

Maria laughs, but Eliza’s heard laughter like that. “I just mean,” Maria says, tucking her hair back, shaking her head. “I need - I needed a hobby. Even with work, with bills and - well, sometimes there are just hours of the day…” She trails off and shrugs and Eliza nods again

“Well,” Eliza says softly, standing and walking to the door. “I certainly don’t think you’re boring. Music is good for being bored, though. It can be consuming. That’s why I like it.”

“Of course,” Maria says. She’s distracted now, eyes flitting around the room.

Eliza opens the door. Like the cat being let in every morning, Maria slips out the barest slit of the door into the hallway, murmuring a _Thank you_ over her shoulder, a hurried _good-night_.

-

Eliza could call the battered women’s shelter. She knows the one in the area. A friend, someone she knew from college, had stayed there for a brief spell during her divorce. If she did that, though, what would happen to this woman? This Maria? Eliza knows she can’t be sure. Eliza isn’t even certain if that decision can, or should, be made for someone. So she stays quiet, and she teaches Maria how to move her wrists more carefully, and occasionally they sing together, low and soft.

Between Maria and Alexander, Eliza’s stomach starts to hurt. She wants to stop thinking about them this way. Together. Separate. Sweet rosehip perfume that lingers. Alexander, stupid and reckless and coming home late and kissing her before bed having just brushed his teeth.

The lessons keep her distracted.

She starts to see Maria as beautiful. Desirable.

It stirs in her chest. Eliza sits at her vanity and wonders why she can’t cry.

-

“I like your perfume,” Eliza says, startled as she breathes deep through her nose. Maria turns to look at her, leaving her fingers hovering over the keys. She smiles.

“Thank you,” she says, and Eliza looks down at Maria’s hands. Her bare wrists are circled by soft, yellowing bruises. Eliza brushes her fingertips across the lines. Maria jolts a little.

“Are you alright?” Eliza says, and Maria takes a sharp breath, her chest heaving. Eliza stares, her face flushing with the sudden realization. 

The familiar scent of this woman’s husky perfume, the same perfume she breathed in front Alexander’s bare throat a few nights ago.

Eliza grazes her fingers across Maria’s shoulder. Maria looks at her, wide-eyed. Her red lipstick has started to drift outside of her lip line.

“Play,” Eliza says, and her voice shakes and she hates herself as she stands up. They are both small. Maria’s spring dress rides up on her bare thighs anyway.

Eliza shuts the door and locks it. Alexander isn’t home; Maria’s fingers find the right keys. “Sing for me, please,” Eliza says, and Maria picks up a tune, something familiar, something Eliza sang to children. Maria’s voice, strong and tenor, now sounds so hollow. She misses a note on the piano. Eliza takes slow steps towards her.

“ _Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb_.”

“Tell me to go,” Eliza says. 

“No,” Maria says, and she stops singing to say the word, drops her voice even deeper, then floats up higher - and higher again. “ _Its fleece was white as snow_.” Eliza thinks she might shatter. Maria hits all the right notes on the keys.

She slides onto the bench besides Maria and touches her thigh. Start with something easy, she decides, and Maria twists to face Eliza, and now her fingers move over the keys so slowly, hitting the wrong notes. Eliza pushes her hand beneath Maria’s skirt.

Maria closes her eyes and her words stutter. “Don’t stop singing,” Eliza says softly. “And play the right notes.”

Maria looks at her again. She sits back, pushes the bench a little further from the piano so her arms are outstretched. She leaves her hands hovering over the keys before she drops them on her lap and goes silent. Eliza settles onto her knees, in front of Maria’s closed legs. Maria stares down at her, the first signs of a flush on her face. 

“I said,” Eliza says, lowering his face to Maria’s thighs and kissing where they touch. “Keep singing.”

“ _It followed her to school one day_ ,” Maria sings, with her hands on the keys once more. Eliza pushes Maria’s dress up and reaches for her underwear. Silky, dark grey, lace on the edges. Eliza presses her nose against the fabric first, and Maria’s voice wavers on, _rule_ and she hits a key too hard. Eliza presses a kiss to Maria’s warm cunt over the panties.

Last time she did this, Eliza was twenty-three. She thinks about it idly, Angelica telling her to go out after she received her master’s in childhood education, telling her to let loose for once. She had just met Alexander the week before. She remembers drinking at a bar in dress that didn’t suit her, too much mascara. A woman, older than her, short hair and a brilliant smile, who bought her drinks the rest of the night. Eliza forgets her name, the woman, who had pushed her back against pillows in an apartment three blocks away from Eliza’s and licked her center until Eliza shuddered and begged to be fucked. Eliza remembers returning the favor, sucking hard and using her fingers until the woman said something about _my clit, dear_ and pulled her away.

“ _It made the children laugh and play_ ,” Maria sings, and Eliza pulls Maria’s underwear down to her thighs. She uses her fingers, pushes Maria’s lips apart and brushes hair out of the way as best she can. 

With a sick pull to her gut, Eliza realizes that Alexander has been here. She suctions her lips around Maria’s clit and lets her teeth tighten and Maria’s voice unhinges a little. She’s stopped playing the piano, a hand instead falling to the back of Eliza’s head, stroking her hair. Eliza powers through a hair that gets stuck on the back of her tongue. She wants to gag. Alex would sit back and apologize and pull it out of his mouth and then go back between her legs for hours, grin at her, moan against her and tell Eliza she had a beautiful cunt, that he loved the sounds she made.

He hasn’t done that in some time.

Maria gasps, shallow and breathless.

Eliza fucks her with her tongue until her jaw aches. Maria has stopped singing, the children’s song over, so Eliza paces herself - faster, she thinks, before someone gets home - and sucks harder and Maria makes these soft, delicate sounds before she shudders and clamps her thighs around Eliza’s head.

Eliza forgets how to breathe.

She kisses Maria’s clit, licks her center, and pulls back.

Maria blinks at her. “I’m sorry,” she stutters.

Maria doesn’t come back to lessons.

Alexander still smells of her perfume.


End file.
